The present invention relates to an apparatus for opening and mixing staple fibre cotton.
As is known, cotton is usually processed by an opening step, carried out by suitable openers, which operate to "open" the cotton fibres and remove therefrom possible impurities.
Known presently available openers, however, have a comparatively low efficiency, since they usually comprises a single cotton supply chamber.
Moreover, in conventional openers, the staple fibres are usually processed by one or more series arranged reels: with such a reel arrangement, in particular, it is possible to open and clean exclusively a cotton amount related to the loading volume of the single supply chamber.
Another drawback of conventional openers is that they disadvantageously pull and stretch the staple fibres being processed, with a poor mixing of the cotton staples.